45 posts categorized "The Next Big Thing"

June 22, 2012

In 2011, Sweden became the first country in the world to let go of an official communication channel and hand it over to our citizens. Together with the Swedish Institute and Visit Sweden, they decided to break all branding principles and revolutionize the voice of a country.

June 21, 2012

Yes it is and I try every day to make it count -- now I can keep track of how I make it count with My Nike+ FUELBAND. I love mine. From the moment I got it I understood the motivational power of it. This is why it won the CyberLion. This is the perfect example of the post digital world!

From RGA: Nike came to us with an idea: a device that tracks your daily activity and a common, universal metric called Fuel for every active body out there. They asked us to design the entire user experience. We ensured ease of use: set your goal, and get from red to green. If you meet your goal, animations celebrate your performance. Hit a streak and Fuelie shows up to cheer you on. Data visualisations show where you were most active daily, weekly, monthly, and beyond. We created Bluetooth synch technology so when you finish your day, your Fuel is wireless synced to the platform. NikeFuel levels the playing field, and fits into your life. #Counts

This is such a cool little app! Upload your images, tag them with media, e-commerce and social profiles and share them with the world. It's easy and fun! ThingLink has lots of tags to play with - Flickr, Facebook, Soundcloud, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, TED, Eventbrite, Mailchimp, Topspin, Amazon, Best buy, Etsy, Spotify, iTunes and Mashable. Try it! http://www.thinglink.com/

June 18, 2012

As the Cannes Lions festivites have gotten underway and the predictions have been noted and posted, the shortlist for 2012 is about to reveal a few winners. For me, I ask a few simple questions - did the work change the industry? Was there a value exchange that linked business objectives with consumer interests in a way that was ownable to the brand. Did the idea provoke a connection to brand?

As I peruse the submissions here are a few that caught my eye.

AMERICAN EXPRESSIn the Promo category, Year 2 of the Small Business Saturday does it for me. American Express and Crispin have submitted chapter two of an idea that is riding a cultural trend in the states.

HELLMANN'SWhat's for dinner tonight? A common question that is aswered by this app from Hellmann’s which prints recipes on a personlized grocery receipts based on the food that you have purchased. While some might find this a bit big brother - i think that the use of data creates a value exchnage that will generate more uses of the product.

SPRITEWhile Sprite and Ogilvy did not change the industry with this one they did dramatize refreshing for these beach goers in a simple fun format.

C & A FASHION LIKEThis one struck me as pure genius as it played off a simple and true insight. The majoroity of woman question their fashion judement while shopping. Knowing that, why not offer to let a network of people help you decide. C & A's Like Fashion app brought the social network to the physical store. This was a great use of technology in the physical world.

Update: The Direct Grand Prix for American Express's Small Business Saturday campaign, which already won a Grand Prix in Promo & Activation.

April 23, 2012

The media landscape is a very different beast today than it was even 5 years ago. Then agency-led television commercials dominated how we channel our marketing. The very fact you are reading this here proves that things have changed. With splashes of Henry Jenkins’ spreadable media concept, experiential marketing, Sir Ken Robinson’s whiteboard execution and Coke’s sophisticated marketing aplomb, the videos take us on a discovery that is as startling as it is revelatory.

The challenge of content creation in an enlightening way, reminds us that every contact point with a customernis a point of judgement that should tell an emotional story. The importance of a content fludity model is also referenced. What is most surprising during the nearly eighteen viewing minutes is how willfully the soft drink marketer peels back the layers of their organization to reveal what’s been working and what hasn’t.

April 17, 2012

Burberry has approached traditional advertising with a great new entertaining spin to introduce its Summer 2012 Eyewear Collection. The fashion brand has teamed up with a selection of emerging British musicians, who have all created a new track for the campaign. The bands are then shown performing the songs in a series of videos, where they also sport sunglasses from the new collection.

The project is curated by Burberry chief creative officer Christopher Bailey, and the videos have all been created in-house. Burberry is releasing them weekly on YouTube during April. Three tracks are out so far: shown here are videos for One Night Only, Marika Hackman, and Life In Film.

A fourth video, starring The Daydream Club, will be released next week. The tracks are also available for download from iTunes and the bands will headline Burberry showa that will take place on May 3 and 4 in Paris, Milan, New York and Sydney.

October 04, 2011

Did you know that there is a revolution going on in the streets of America? What started rally cry to 90,000 redeemers, rebels and radicals has turned into a thundering movement that is sweeping across the country. #OCCUPYWALLSTREET has morphed into a full-fledged peaceful movement.

In June, as our elected leaders played a game of chicken with our unstable economy by manufacturing a debt crisis that would lead to the downgrade of America’s credit rating, the anti-consumerism magazine Adbusters registered the domain occupywallstreet.org. While the majority of American’s watched in disgust as elected official left for summer vacations instead of solving the problems they were elected to fix, an independent affinity group registered occupywallst.org. This is where the movement’s official site is now hosted. Not long after the registration of the sites, Anonymous, a hacker activist group, encouraged it's members to flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months.

For those of you unfamiliar with Anonymous, they were involved in the protests in Tunisia and Egypt. During the 2011 Egyptian revolution, Egyptian government web sites, along with the website of the ruling National Democratic Party, were hacked into and taken offline by Anonymous. The sites remained offline until President Hosni Mubarak stepped down. Anonymous also has ties to Wikileaks, further explaining the sighting of the Wikileaks truck at the protest sites.

One of the most consistent complaints from the protesters has been the lack of un-biased reporting of the real issues by the mainstream, corporate-owned press. No one knows if Anonymous plans to hack any U.S. news organizations, but based on past activities, it seems its a real possibility. Given the recent ridiculing and dismissive nature of Time Warner’s / CNN’s recent coverage by Erin Burnett or even interviews like the ones conducted by the Business Insider, I would not be surprised if Anonymous was already working on a plan.

Corporate-owned media outlets claim that the movement lacks a focus, however if you’ve have watched the content they have distributed or taken part in a rally you would hear three things:

The middle of American has realized they can have as much influence as corporations have with the use of technology and social media: Thus we are the 99% (http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com)

“DEMOCRACY NOT CORPORATOCRACY”: Protestors feel that corporations have bought and corrupted our democracy by influencing elected leaders to stand behind policies that hurt the American worker. They stand for the American workers and are fighting for proper representation in Washington.

There is a better way: Protesters hope that their peaceful actions lead to a new social dynamic in America. Protestors are demanding accountability from a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington.

The movement’s core message, which is often lost in AdBusters anti-consumerism message, is that 1% of the population has profited wildly from the last 20 years and the other 99% have seen zero. Special interest money has corrupted our system. That's not sustainable. It's not fair. And it's not the America that 99% of Americans want. If this is a democracy, those numbers should matter.

You may have also seen images of protestors wearing Masks. Those are Guy Falkes masks. This is a disguise used by members of Anonymous to protect their identities and brand their activities. Guy Fawkes was part of a plot to overthrow the king of England in the early 1600s and his character was made popular in the comic book V for Vendetta.

A Growing National MovementAs protesters and citizen journalists share their stories in Zuccotti Park (near Wall Street), Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Chicago and other cities across the country, we have recorded a groundswell of conversations and interactions taking place online. There are daily additions to the URLs who are covering and enabling this revolution. You can visit http://www.occupytogether.org/ to get in on the local action in your area.

We are people of Substance.We are supportive and sympathetic to the protesters. They are showing enormous courage in the face of seemingly all-powerful institutions. They are being arrested, maced and harassed without the protection of a free-press. They are mocked, laughed at and even toasted with champagne from high-price balconies and yet they remain peaceful.

I encourage you to visit a few of the movement sites I have listed below. Judge the movement and its message for yourself. You may find that you are part of The 99%.

Tags:
#OCCUPYWALLSTREET, #OccupyWallStreet, AdBusters, Anonymous, Guy Falkes, NYC General Assembly, Occupy Together #OccupyTogether #occupywallst, occupywallstreet.org, Take The Square, US Day of Rage, We Are The 99%, Wikileaks truck, Zuccotti Park

September 12, 2011

Seven months ago I left Madison Ave. For years, I preached and practiced, award-winning digital, social and direct methods with the biggest brands on earth. In the early part of 2009, while working on a new business pitch I observed a disturbing truth. Madison Avenue could not figure out how to make money (profits) at developing ideas.

The combination of antiquated customer research methods, fear, “tried and true channels” and disparate media planning groups seemed to be just a few of the issues that were quickly walking business out the door of digital, direct and advertising firms up and down the street.

A sad fact is that the once great story-selling Mad Ave firms have all become channel specialists. They had depleted their planning departments of insightful talent and replaced them with data experts and social media ninjas. Don’t get me wrong, data is very, very, very important – but the analysis and synthesis of the data by conceptual craftsmen who create relevant ideas is even more important and what seems to be lost art form.

While they were flipping channels and chasing bright shiny new digital toys, they lost the importance of relevant customer and cultural insights. Furthermore, we were now in competition with a once friendly face. The media companies. Content creators like MTV, Disney and AMC whose audience insights were vast. They also had begun producing brand campaigns for clients that delivered far more reach and relevance than that 30-second ad could produce on its own.

In 2010, one-by-one, the dominos began to fall. The market changed, the service economy retracted and marketers began asking “What’s the ROI on this agency of record relationship?”. Instead of getting the basics of what made this industry great, some had specialized so much that they had become tactical units with a VERY narrow way forward. If this scenario sounds familiar, let me know.

Over the last eight months, I have spent my time working directly with a number of big brand CMOs, big box retailers, industry journalists, VCs, data & social start-ups, media companies, politicians, employment analysts and handful of agencies that are winning new business. There is a new need and an empty seat at the strategic and creative table. It could be yours.

When the old ways begin to give way to something yet to be imagined, we have a choice. Live in the past or get down to the business of imaging the future. -- John F. Kennedy

Today there is an enormous opportunity to not just imagine the future but also take the lead in creating the Post-Digital economy.

This blog will be dedicated to ideas, insights and people that are making artworks that address the humanization of digital technologies through interplay between digital, biological, cultural, and spiritual systems, between cyberspace and real space, between embodied media and mixed reality in social and physical communication, between high tech and high touch experiences, between visual, haptic, auditory, and kinesthetic media experiences, between virtual and augmented reality, between roots and globalization, between autoethnography and community narrative, and between web-enabled peer-produced wikiart and artworks created with alternative media through participation, interaction, and collaboration in which the role of the artist, the communicator and the agency is redefined.

There is a new exciting future on the horizon. You just need to know your customers and accept that basic behavioral observations and insights coupled with new collective art forms. Welcome to the post-digital era.

July 29, 2011

If you have not seen me in the social media high school halls its because I have a new drug. Me and my peeps are sharing music on Spotify. This is a service I had drooled over when I saw two of my brit friends with it about a year ago. If you are a music lover, it's kinda like when the beatles just arrived. Yes - Spotify has come to the US!

Right now it's in an invite-only beta phase. They are offering three great services - from absolutely free to paid subscriptions. Here is how it breaks down:

Spotify Free – the unsurpassed free music service. With an invite, enjoy on-demand, buffer-free access to over 15 million songs on your computer and great social features. Manage your own music files through Spotify, and sync with your cellphone or iPod. Features occasional advertising.

Spotify Unlimited – all the special features of our free service, but with uninterrupted, ad-free access to Spotify on your computer. All for only $4.99 a month.

Spotify Premium - the top-of-the-range Spotify experience. Premium gives you access to all the music, all the time. Listen online or offline, on your computer, your cellphone and a whole heap of other devices. Enjoy enhanced sound quality and access to exclusive content, competitions and special offers. Premium costs just $9.99 a month. (That’s the equivalent of a couple of fancy coffees.)

Right now my favorite part of this is being able to subscribe to my friends lists. I have almost abandoned my iTunes Library.

The part that makes this super interesting is that they are launching in partnership with some of the biggest brands. Coca-Cola and Sprite, Chevrolet, Motorola, Reebok, Sonos and The Daily are the few I know about. These brands will be launching innovative campaigns in partnership with Spotify in the coming weeks and months. Imagine the possibilites!

If your looking for an invite I have a few left. Send me your email via this blog!